Tatiana didn’t understand every word that Dorian said to the puffskein, but the general idea was easy enough to pick up and she smiled, too, as he petted the little creature in her hands.

“Souffle?” she said, gently teasing. “This says dessert, yes?” She drew the puffskein closer to her chest as though to protect it, though she couldn’t imagine Dorian ever trying to harm anyone or anything on purpose. It wasn’t his nature, and her expression showed she was joking as she did this. “No, no, no,” she said. “Not eat Ob’yatichka. No worry, ditya,” she said soothingly to the puffskein, stroking it. ”Ya ne budu yest’ tebya.”

She nodded when Dorian suggested trying other bedding materials along with soft cloths for Ob’yatichka’s bed. “Yes, yes,” she said, nodding. “Put down on desk - let choose, then - good one in the box,” she said, pointing to the cage that was to be the puffskein’s home because the specific kind of box slipped her mind. It didn’t matter much with Dorian - he wouldn’t make fun of her for inexact words. If she didn’t make sense he might ask her to try different words, but he wouldn’t make fun of her because he knew how it was to lose words. She didn’t even think of this consciously very much anymore - it was just a fundamental understanding of her life here.

“What else is good, you think?” she asked. “Straw? Paper?”

OOC: Ob’yatichka is more or less “cuddle (as a noun) + diminutive”. ‘Ditya’ is a form of ‘baby.’ “Ya ne budu yest’ tebya’ means “I will not eat you.”

Dorian was a little put off by the presence of an unfamiliar face at the front of the classroom. He didn’t have particularly strong feelings one way or the other about Professor Taransay as a person, ... more